My Gentleman Friend

Dearie's voice is unlike anything else in jazz: small, precise, airy, hovering just above whisper in a register that sounds like a very sophisticated child who has somehow already learned everything about adult life. The piano accompaniment — her own playing — is light and witty, touches of stride and bebop filtered through a sensibility that's entirely French-influenced despite her upbringing in East Grand Forks. This song is a playful flirtation, the lyric dancing between innocence and knowingness with perfect comic timing. The genius of Dearie's delivery is the straight face: she plays it as though everything she's saying is entirely reasonable, which makes the subtle cheekiness of the material funnier than it would be with winking or emphasis. The production is minimal and close-mic'd, giving the recording an almost conversational intimacy, as though you've pulled up a chair beside the piano. Dearie belonged to a specific downtown New York supper club world of the 1950s and 60s — cerebral, witty, slightly bohemian, appreciated by musicians and writers rather than mass audiences. Her cult following has always been devoted precisely because she sounds like a secret. Reach for this in the afternoon with something good to drink, when you want music that's intelligent and light at once, that makes cleverness feel like warmth.